2008 10Best Winners and Losers

Ten who won, 10 who lost, and a few who exceeded their C02 emissions cap.

Losers: The 2007 Chutzpah Cup goes to Juan and Josephine Trevino of San Pedro, California. After racking up $379,000 in unpaid tolls and fines on a single freeway with an automated toll collecting system, the owners of a termite extermination business did what anyone would do under the circumstances: They sued the county. The Trevinos claimed they never received notification of the fines and that the penalties were excessive. The county said it mailed more than 1600 notices. Meanwhile, police handed out 41 tickets in two hours to residents of Oxnard, California, for leaving cars idling at the curb while unattended. Police say the $65 ticket is intended to remind citizens that one-third of the 614 vehicles stolen in Oxnard in 2006 had the keys in them or were running at the time.

Winner: Gurcharan Dran, a practicing Sikh, complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission and was paid compensation by Paramount Canada’s Wonderland theme park near Toronto after being forced off the go-kart ride for refusing to remove his turban and wear a helmet. The park said it is required by Ontario’s Technical Standards and Safety Authority to compel all riders to wear helmets, and that it would ask the Ministry of Government Services, which controls the Technical Standards and Safety Authority, for a specific exemption for Sikhs from the go-kart helmet rule so that it could comply with the findings of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Ontario’s Office of Ridiculous Offices said in a statement that “we’re a turbans-on country.”

Loser: Daimler-Benz paid $37 billion to acquire the moneymaking Chrysler Corporation in 1998. After chasing away talent, cheapening the cars, and annoying dealers, Daimler then flicked the money-losing operation onto Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm named for the three-headed, flesh-eating hound that guards the gates of Hell. The price? A measly $7.4 billion cash payment toward Chrysler’s vast debt, which includes $18 billion in unfunded pension and healthcare obligations. Before it could declare all quiet on the western front, Daimler had to pay $650 million out of pocket as part of the deal to cover ongoing losses at Chrysler.

Winner: A Chrysler spokesman told Automotive News that any magazine publishing the dollar figure reportedly offered to Jim Press, Toyota’s former North American chief exec who jumped ship to Chrysler in September, has journalistic standards “eerily close to pig slop.” That was right after it was revealed that Press’s pay package could exceed $50 million with stock options. Even former Chrysler Group CEO and merger survivor Tom LaSorda was paid just over $3 million in 2006 and stands to clean up in Cerberus’s pay scheme, which lards five percent of Chrysler’s share equity to the top 75 managers.

Loser: The Big Three’s share of the car market continued its implosion. Over the summer, sales of domestic-brand new cars dwindled to a new low of 48.1 percent of the market, down four percent from a year earlier. Ford led the plunge, with its market share deflating to 15.5 percent in the third quarter of ’07 on the heels of a $12.7 billion loss for all of 2006. It was also noted in 2007 that Ford president and CEO Alan Mulally earned $28.2 million in his first four months on the job.